The Enforcement Directorate (ED) registered a case against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Wednesday, April 12, under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). The case has been registered for irregularities in foreign funding.
The move by ED comes after the Income Tax (I-T) Department carried out surveys in the broadcaster’s Delhi and Mumbai offices in February. The I-T survey came weeks after the BBC released a two-part documentary titled, “India: The Modi Question’, which took a look at the Gujarat riots of 2002 and the role of the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the riots.
Sources in the I-T Department said they were looking at ‘Transfer Pricing’, an area of taxation, where they were checking if BBC India had sent money outside the country, for which tax had to be paid in India.
After the surveys, the Income Tax department said that it had found "several discrepancies and inconsistencies with regard to transfer pricing documentation". It also said the income and profits shown by various BBC group entities were "not commensurate with the scale of operations" in India.
Sources have claimed the ED has lodged a case of violation of the FEMA against the BBC on the basis of the I-T survey.
Read: I-T survey on BBC tried to find Indian collaborators to Modi documentary: Sources | The News Minute
With IANS inputs